Anthropomorphic Monkeys in a Village Setting

Anthropomorphised monkeys in an Asian village setting. Oil on canvas. 70cm tall x 108cm wide and 4cm deep Label verso for the Norcross Transfer and Storage company, Charlottesville, North Carolina, USA. This humorous painting is a lively and ingeniously painted pastiche of formal Chinese landscapes. In the distance there are pagodas on rocky hills, and a willow curves elegantly into the painting from an outcrop at the right. Storks complement the scene, and at the right there is a yellow-crested cockatoo resting on a branch. The cockatoo may be a hint that the painting was not produced in China, since the bird is native to East Timor and Indonesia. Yellow cockatoos are known in Hong Kong, however, since at least the middle of the Twentieth Century, where they are the descendants of escaped pets.1 The usual human staffage of Chinese landscapes has been replaced in this painting by monkeys dressed in human clothes. They are performing a range of humorous antics throughout the painting. Two are playing on a seesaw in the centre, while a third in a conical peasant’s hat holds a precarious lantern over them, oblivious to two further monkeys craning down from a treetop trying to grab it. Two more are playing blindman’s buff at the left, while above them all a monkey sage in a white turban watches from the balcony of a bamboo house, unaware that an attendant is about to hit him on the head with a fan. At the right there is boisterous noise and movement where a monkey has fallen off a ball she is trying to sit on, losing her hat in the process, while a black and white Pekinese barks excitedly at her and another monkey plays the flute. Despite the Asian setting our painting may equally have been painted in the West, and perhaps in North America. The earliest provenance is a label from the Norcross Transfer and Storage company, Charlottesville, North Carolina, who were trading from new premises in 1924.2 The graphic style of the monkey figures and their lively reactive quality has parallels with American comic illustration of the period. Humorous monkeys have a place in traditional Chinese art, but they are not usually shown as humanly as this or wearing clothes. A rare example of anthropomorphised animal art is Ink Play of Cat and Mice by Pu Hsin-yu (1896–1963) in which mice drink and carouse in front of a sleeping cat.3 The clothes worn by some of the monkeys – particularly the feathered straw hats and smocks worn by the four central figures ¬– suggest a Western painter interpreting the idiom. Monkey paintings, known as singeries, have a long-established tradition in Western European art, in which the dressed monkey is a satirical comment on human habits and customs. Using monkeys as a pictorial comment on manners first appears in the margins of medieval illuminated manuscripts. A monkey looked at themself in a mirror in a marginal illustration to the Isabella Breviary, late 1480s–before 1497 (British Library). But the genre reached its height in the Baroque and Rococo, with paintings such as A Monkey Barber Surgeon’s Establishment by David Teniers II (1610–1690) in the collection of the Wellcome Foundation. In the Eighteenth Century monkey-themed paintings and decorative arts were so popular that in the 1750s Meissen produced an entire set of monkey orchestra figurines, an example of which was acquired by King Louis XV.4 These were inspired by the French animal painter Christophe Huet who painted an elaborate singerie for the wall decoration of a room in the Chateau de Chantilly, where monkeys are shown in a fantasy of Chinese costume. Our painting is a delightful example of this tradition. The treatment is highly accomplished. The serene landscape is a skilful homage to the style of Chinese landscapes, while the figures are lively and freely painted. The draperies of the costume have a nervous lightness and the faces are expressive, mobile and highly individual. Each figure is given a discernible personality and the whole scene is animated by a sense of life and laughter. 1. The Hong Kong population is now the second largest in the world. Wild Creatures Hong Kong https://www.wildcreatureshongkong.org/single-post/the-yellow-crested-cockatoo-and-some-history-of-hong-kong 2. The building was converted c.2014 into Norcross Apartments https://www.norcrossstation.net 3. Expressions of Humor in Chinese Painting and Calligraphy, Northern Branch Galleries exhibition January 1st – 25th March 2017 https://theme.npm.edu.tw/exh106/ExpressionsOfHumor/en/index.html 4. Monkey Orchestra by Meissen at https://www.meissen.com/en/meissencollectiondetail/monkey-orchestra — More Information